yay me

[waider]

I'm (mis)quoted in this week's NTK regarding a tshirt with Japanese on it. The second translation they mention isn't of the shirt, it's what BabelFish suggested when I asked it for a translation for "Need to Know". If you're curious, the five big "letters" at the top are the kanji for "know", the katakana letters ri, be, and ka; and the kanji for "thing". katakana letters indicate a word from outside the Japanse lanaguage rendered phoenetically, so if "ribeka" sounds like a word you know in any language then maybe that's the word I'm missing. Of course, due to the slight differences in vocalisation in Japan, that could also be "libeka", "liveka", or "riveka". If the "ri" is actually supposed to be in hiragana, it becomes part of the "know" formation, pronunced "shiru", which I think is correct, but I was never a good student of Japanese and I've forgotten much of what little I learned, so.

update: that's "ru", not "ri", and "ki", not "ka". Damn my eyes, typing, and other things. The phrase turns out to read "shirubeki koto"; shiru = "to know", koto = "thing", and beki is apparently a suffix meaning "must be done".